MAXON Bloghttps://maxon.net/fr_FR.utf8MAXONFri, 22 Feb 2019 15:37:26 +0100Fri, 22 Feb 2019 15:37:26 +0100TYPO3 EXT:newsnews-5163Wed, 27 Jul 2016 15:19:10 +0200The Next Brush Strokes for BodyPaint 3Dhttps://maxon.net/fr/actualites/maxon-blog/article/the-next-brush-strokes-for-bodypaint-3d/Many have asked what’s next for BodyPaint&nbsp;3D. MAXON is excited to share some aspects of the future of BodyPaint&nbsp;3D.Sixteen years ago MAXON introduced Bodypaint 3D and revolutionized the 3D texture painting workflow. The integrated palette of cross-platform painting and UV tools have provided an outstanding creative suite for many of you to add exquisite detail to your surfaces in film, game design and other workflows.

Many of you have asked what’s next for Bodypaint 3D, and I’m excited to share some aspects of the exciting future of Bodypaint 3D.

Last year we visited many current and potential Bodypaint 3D users, and collected a substantial amount of feedback on how to enhance both the painting and UV tools. On the painting side, it was clear that BodyPaint’s reliance on CPU-based software shading was limiting a lot of its potential. We tasked our development team with transitioning Bodypaint 3D’s painting engine to OpenGL, and they have made fantastic progress - so much so that we’re excited to share a preview with you today. BodyPaint’s new OpenGL painting engine will offer much greater performance, improved visual feedback, and a smoother workflow.

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While the progress has been great, we aren’t quite satisfied yet. In an effort to make sure this major change to Bodypaint 3D meets our standard of quality we won’t be delivering this as part of Release 18, but you can look forward to getting it in your hands within the R18 product cycle.

As we worked towards the goal of moving BodyPaint to OpenGL, our team saw this as a great opportunity to eliminate software shading altogether. Release 18 will utilize the Mesa open-source library to deliver an OpenGL-based fallback that utilizes the CPU. This will offer users without adequate graphics cards or drivers the opportunity to experience the outstanding quality that OpenGL offers, and streamline our future efforts in viewport development.

Also, after careful review and discussions with many Bodypaint 3D users, we’ve decided to remove the Raybrush feature from Release 18. This feature was incredibly innovative for its time, but is no longer compatible with our modern rendering pipeline and is no longer necessary thanks to technology enhancements. We're confident Raybrush will be fully replaced by BodyPaint’s new OpenGL workflow, which will offer an outstanding interactive preview of reflectance, bump, transparency, alpha and more.

The next thing we’ll be tackling with Bodypaint 3D is new algorithms and workflows to make UV mapping a faster and more intuitive process. As we continue to enhance both the modeling and UV toolsets, we’ll begin to merge their functionality.

I’m excited about Bodypaint 3D’s next brush strokes, and I hope you are too. As always we’re working hard to get new and improved workflows into your hands as quickly as possible, but want to ensure that we maintain the level of quality and ease-of-use you expect within Cinema 4D.

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]]>news-5062Tue, 15 Mar 2016 09:55:00 +0100Renting vs Buying software. Which is best for you?https://maxon.net/fr/actualites/maxon-blog/article/renting-vs-buying-software-which-is-best-for-you/In recent times, a variety of software manufacturers have changed the way they offer licenses from perpetual (where you buy the software) to rental. Rental solutions typically offer you the latest software for an attractive monthly rate but there is just one catch…If you stop paying, you lose your software!

That’s quite a catch! Rental is all well and good when you can afford to pay, but imagine this: Your business hits a bad spell, your cash-flow dries up and you can’t afford to pay the fee. Then you instantly lose access to the software, which is likely your only way to continue your business. Just like that, you’re finished. It’s a scary thought but we all know it can happen, and it’s precisely why we think perpetual licenses are still very important. With perpetual licenses, your software doesn’t expire if your business hits a lean time.

What if you were given the choice? Which option would suit you best?

Those are two questions we’ve been thinking about a lot. We’ve been monitoring the feedback from customers moving to the new rental models offered by other companies. Some like them, some don’t and both have very valid reasons. At MAXON, we believe the choice should be yours to make. Therefore, we now offer both long-term and short-term software solutions. Even better, we offer a chance to upgrade from short-term to perpetual licenses. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each, and then you can make up your mind which type suits you best:

Perpetual licenses.

These are licenses that you buy outright and offer several benefits:

They are cheaper to keep continuously upgraded in the long run. After the initial license purchase, a 12-month MAXON Service Agreement for Cinema 4D Studio is currently just 500 €/$650/£400, excl. VAT, annually. By contrast, a short-term license costs 1900 €/$2200/£1460, excl. VAT, for one year.

If you can't afford to upgrade, your license will still continue to work. Even though it’s always helpful to have the latest version of the software, you can still create great imagery using older software if times are hard.

Last but not least there are assets, which you can sell if you ever need to. This is helpful in case you ever change your mind about 3D software and want to focus elsewhere.

The only drawback of a perpetual license is the initial cost.

Short-Term licenses.

These are licenses that work in the short-term and have three key benefits:

They are perfect for short-term users of the software such as freelancers or for companies in need of hiring additional artists to ramp up short-term on a project.

They are initially much less expensive than perpetual licenses.

You can upgrade to a perpetual license upon expiration of the short-term license. Although slightly more expensive than buying perpetual licenses, this allows you to dip into 3D without making a huge investment.

However, Short-Term licenses have several drawbacks:

Once the license expires it stops working.

If a new release of Cinema 4D comes out, you’re stuck with the version you have until it is time to extend your license.

Your short-term license cannot be transferred to someone else. If you use it for a couple of months and then want to sell it, you can’t.

Utilizing a short-term license long-term (2 years or more), works out to be more expensive than perpetual licenses.

Which is better for you?

This really depends on your budget and your time requirements. However, I think you’ll probably fall into one of the four types below. I’ve suggested what I think is the best solution for each need:

If you need 3D software long-term…Perpetual with MAXON Service Agreement makes the most sense. While they are much more expensive initially, the cost of maintaining a Cinema 4D Studio license is equivalent to under 45 €/$55/£35, excl. VAT, a month.

If you want to dip before fully investing…Short-term licenses make sense if you want to make sure Cinema 4D is really the software for you. If you’re happy with it you can move to a perpetual license for the best value.

If you only need Cinema 4D for a few months...Short-term licenses make the most sense. Perfect for a short-term project.

If you only have a small software budget...Short-term licenses can help your cash flow as you can pay for small time periods at a time. Plus you can always upgrade to perpetual when funds allow if you wish to.

In summary

Hopefully, the above information has helped you figure out which license type is best for you, even if you start with one type you can still move to the other, if you really need to. We’re trying to ensure we’re offering what you need us to.

Perhaps you want us to go further and take advantage of monthly rental like some other companies. If that’s the case, let us know and we’ll look into it. MAXON has always been and will always be driven by the requests of our customers. We really value your feedback. Any ideas or needs you have, let us know on the suggestions page.

Naturally, pricing also comes into play. You can find your localized pricing and options on our buy page. If you still have questions and need more information, remember that your local MAXON representative is always just a phone call or email away.

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]]>news-5036Thu, 10 Mar 2016 12:23:00 +0100A Whole New World of Virtual Realityhttps://maxon.net/fr/actualites/maxon-blog/article/a-whole-new-world-of-virtual-reality/A whole new world. A new fantastic point of view. No one to tell us 'no' or where to go - or say we're only dreaming. I love the song "A Whole New World" from Disney's Aladdin (can you tell I have young children?). The idea of opening someone's eyes to something new has always driven me – I am the tour guide on every family vacation, and I'm typically your guide to new features and workflows on Cineversity.com.

I'm especially excited to introduce users to Virtual Reality, because it's a great opportunity to immerse people in the fantastic worlds created in Cinema 4D. We hear a lot about Virtual Reality for Games, but I think the practical uses in advertising, architecture, medical illustration and education are perhaps even more exciting. VR is unique because the viewer is fully immersed in the environment, forced to give their undivided attention to the experience. There's few opportunities today that can build that type of brand engagement or so captivate individuals.

There's two main types of Virtual Reality experiences – interactive and pre-rendered VR. With interactive VR you'll export Cinema 4D content to a game engine and the VR experience is rendered in real time and delivered via a dedicated application. This allows you to build in a lot of interactivity, but you have to limit your geometry and rendering based on the abilities of the game engine and the output hardware. Pre-rendered VR sacrifices a lot of the interactivity, but it allows you to render and treat your 3D content like any other video source. Pre-rendered VR can be viewed by anyone on YouTube or Facebook. Both types of content can be viewed on any of the various VR platforms – Google Cardboard, GearVR, Oculus Rift or HTC Vive – although the higher-end platforms are more suited to interactive VR.

Of course the key for Cinema 4D artists is understanding the possibilities and workflow for Virtual Reality content. With so many VR platforms coming out in 2016, I think we'll see a huge demand for content – especially from brands that want to appear cutting-edge. Cineversity will be producing lots of tutorials and tools this year to help you succeed in Virtual Reality, an effort that actually started last December with the release of my CV-VRCam plugin and an introductory series on VR video. This month we've published a series on interactive VR using Unity and the Oculus Rift, another series on VR video, and we’ll soon update CV-VRCam with more features suggested by our panel of VR experts.

I hope you'll join me on this magic carpet ride, and discover how virtual reality can provide a new canvas for your 3D creations and new opportunities for your 3D business. Cineversity Premium Membership is included with every Cinema 4D MSA, so many of you already have a ticket to ride. If you have an MSA and do not already have Cineversity access, contact your Cinema 4D distributor.

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PS: Make sure to stop by the MAXON booth at GDC San Francisco this month, or at NAB in April to chat more about VR and pick up your own Cinema 4D edition of Google Cardboard.

]]>news-5002Tue, 16 Feb 2016 12:15:00 +0100Foundations for the Futurehttps://maxon.net/fr/actualites/maxon-blog/article/foundations-for-the-future/I have had the privilege of leading our incredibly talented group of creative developers for the last two decades. We’ve been fortunate to have a consistent, loyal and dedicated team. All but one of our original core developers are still working on Cinema 4D. Few software companies can assert this kind of stability. So I’m honored to give you a peek into the great work our development team has and will be doing.

Cinema 4D has enjoyed great success, and it’s exciting to see how you, our customers, are using our software to create visual effects, futuristic user interfaces in movies like Avengers, Spectre and Mockingjay, countless motion graphics across television and the web, for architectural and scientific visualization, gaming, designing new consumer products, and so much more. It’s your artistic vision and passion that drive us to create a Cinema 4D that’s robust, easy to use, feature-rich and modern.

Keeping any software package modern is indeed a struggle, especially in the fast evolving, cutting-edge arena of 3D. Cinema 4D was introduced over 20 years ago and is still one of the top 3D packages on the market today. That wouldn’t be the case if we hadn’t been constantly updating and enhancing Cinema 4D.

The core architecture our developers put in place 16 years ago with Cinema 4D R6 has served us incredibly well and we are working to ensure Cinema 4D’s long-term future. What you don’t know is that work has already been underway for a few years, with those same core developers joined by many others to build a strong new foundation for Cinema 4D’s future. We’ve been gradually incorporating these efforts for several releases, and here are some of the results:

A rich foundation of groundbreaking fundamental technologies have been created, including a highly-efficient threading system for massive data-parallelism and new optimized data structures, to name just a few. We are using the latest state of the art algorithms, compilers, tools and technologies to build the foundation that will drive Cinema 4D's progress and innovation for the next decade.

Everything is based on a highly modular architecture that allows us to combine the current Cinema 4D with the new core. This in fact took place in Release 16 and means that you are in part already experiencing the future of Cinema 4D today!

Our development team is adopting these advanced capabilities into the products we are creating today. While new developments are based on the new core, existing functionality continues to work seamlessly and will become even more powerful once it's transitioned natively to the new architecture.

We’ve progressed deliberately - and yes, quietly. We wanted our team to have space to carefully consider the best path for the future, to avoid pitfalls and to keep Cinema 4D moving forward throughout the process.

Transitioning Cinema 4D fully to the new core will still take several more releases. Lots of existing code will need to be tweaked and tested, both internally and by our third-party development partners.

With this ongoing effort, we have still been able to refresh aspects of Cinema 4D and to deliver outstanding new features. To maintain these efforts, we've hired quite a number of new programmers in the last two years and we are actively recruiting. Last year, we opened an office in Canada specifically for recruiting and hosting the excellent 3D development talent in Montreal.

Above all, we will maintain the essence of Cinema 4D and further improve its workflow, ease of use, legendary stability, and provide you with great tools to achieve your artistic goals.

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]]>news-4974Tue, 12 Jan 2016 14:55:00 +01002016 - Opportunities and Challengeshttps://maxon.net/fr/actualites/maxon-blog/article/2016-opportunities-and-challenges/Happy New Year!Each new year offers time for reflection on the past year and a chance to examine opportunities for the next. This past year was once again very successful for MAXON and we're enthusiastic about 2016. This year is uniquely special for MAXON - it was 30 years ago this year that my friends and co-founding partners, Harald Egel, Harald Schneider, and myself started MAXON. None of us could have imagined the remarkable journey we have taken. Most importantly, we're especially grateful to our customers and partners who have helped us to reach this exciting milestone.

We've seen the industry go through many changes during these past three decades. As we look ahead to 2016, the industry is once again evolving and MAXON as one of the leading manufacturers will play a major role in this process. So I want to take this opportunity to provide a bit of insight into how MAXON plans to address changes to the way you, our customers, purchase and use software.

Much like MAXON, many of our customers have established subsidiaries around the globe, and have expressed a desire to manage their licenses from a central headquarters but utilize those licenses worldwide. To address this need, MAXON will be introducing a global licensing program in the coming year. For an additional cost, companies can license Cinema 4D for highly effective use distributed worldwide across their enterprise. Additionally, for those who are using the industry standard RLM license management, MAXON will offer a solution to integrate Cinema 4D and BodyPaint 3D licenses smoothly into their pipelines.

However, the most significant change that has come to our industry is the shift from perpetual to subscription-based licensing. While MAXON remains committed to offering a perpetual license with the security of software ownership, we also recognize that subscription models make it easier for individuals to acquire software and for larger companies to adjust licensing counts to satisfy short-term production needs. Therefore, in 2016, MAXON will be exploring new ways to offer Cinema 4D in a time-limited fashion to satisfy this demand.

Once again, I’d like to personally thank all our customers and partners. Without you, we could never have reached this exciting milestone. And, I wish you all a prosperous 2016.

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]]>news-4949Fri, 18 Dec 2015 13:49:00 +0100First Blog Posthttps://maxon.net/fr/actualites/maxon-blog/article/first-blog-post/Welcome to the official MAXON blog. We’ve noticed that many of our customers would like to have an official place where they can get direct information and official statements. In the past, MAXON has given the impression of being somewhat closed-mouthed about future development plans. This, however, will change with the introduction of our new MAXON blog.

If you’re interested in MAXON, the company and its employees, our products Cinema 4D and BodyPaint 3D, the artists and industries that use Cinema 4D, or anything 3D or design-related, you’ve come to the right place. This blog provides a new venue where dedicated MAXON employees share their views of what’s happening in the content creation industries, offer some perspective on Cinema 4D development and provide an insight into and from people around the world who make and use MAXON’s 3D solutions.

These blogs will not be written anonymously. To get to know MAXON better a face will be put behind each blog entry. You can expect to see a wide variety of MAXON people post to this blog – and each will be signed by the person who authored it.

The primary place for news and product information will remain the News section of the MAXON website. However, we have some exciting plans for the MAXON Blog as well so we hope to see you there often!